A week ago, in retaliation to the inane charges lobbed by the US accusing 5 Chinese army officials of spying on US companies (when the NSA spying scandal on, well, everyone refuses to leave the front pages), China announced it would ban the use of Windows 8 on government computers (considering the quality of Windows 8, this is likely a decision government computers would have taken on their own regardless). Today, China has expanded its list of sanctioned companies from Microsoft to include IBM as well, following a Bloomberg report that the Chinese government is pushing domestic banks to "remove high-end servers made by International Business Machines Corp. and replace them with a local brand."

Why is MSFT and now IBM sowing the seeds of the US government's stupidity and failed attempts to distract from its own spying scandals? We don't know. Here is what we do know:

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Government agencies, including the People’s Bank of China and the Ministry of Finance, are reviewing whether Chinese commercial banks’ reliance on IBM servers compromises the country’s financial security, said the four people, who asked not to be identified because the review hasn’t been made public.

The review fits a broader pattern of retaliation after American prosecutors indicted five Chinese military officers for allegedly hacking into the computers of U.S. companies and stealing secrets. Last week, China’s government said it will vet technology companies operating in the country, while the Financial Times reported May 25 that China ordered state-owned companies to cut ties with U.S. consulting firms.

Harriet Ip, a Singapore-based spokeswoman for IBM, referred questions to IBM in the U.S. Jeffrey Cross, a Somers, New York-based spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment outside U.S. business hours.

“Security trumps everything,” said Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China Ltd., a Beijing-based consultant to technology companies. “China doesn’t need the U.S. companies in the way it did for the last few decades.”

Perhaps somewhat ironically, IBM sold its low-end server business to Lenovo, itself a part of IBM once upon a time, several months ago for $2.3 billion.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Three Google Inc researchers have uncovered a security bug in widely used web encryption technology that they say could allow hackers to take over accounts for email, banking and other services in what they have dubbed a "Poodle" attack.

The discovery of "Poodle," which stands for Padding Oracle On Downloaded Legacy Encryption, prompted makers of web browsers and server software to advise users on Tuesday to disable use of the source of the security bug: an 18-year old encryption standard known as SSL 3.0.

It was the third time this year that researchers have uncovered a vulnerability in widely used web technology, following April's "Heartbleed" bug in OpenSSL and last month's "Shellshock" bug in a piece of Unix software known as Bash.

Security experts said that hackers could steal browser "cookies" in "Poodle" attacks, potentially taking control of email, banking and social networking accounts. Even so, experts said the threat was not as serious as the two prior bugs.

"If Shellshock and Heartbleed were Threat Level 10, then Poodle is more like a 5 or a 6," said Tal Klein, vice president with cloud security firm Adallom.

The threat was disclosed in a research paper published on the website of the OpenSSL Project, which develops the most widely used type of SSL encryption software.

As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.